I read both of Octavia Butler's short story collections: Bloodchild and Other Stories, which includes a couple of interesting essays on writing in addition to the short stories, and Unexpected Stories, which features two stories that were not published during Butler's life. Butler favored the novel over the short…

The writers have definitely done a disservice to Ray this season by not acknowledging his city counsel gig, even in passing, and instead focusing what little time the viewers have with him on the hipster awfulness that is Helvetica and pining for Marnie. Her?

Katt Williams struggles with living in a world where an unfunny dude like Kevin Hart shows up in all of the movies and all he can show up in is a youtube video getting punched in the face. It's tragic. Not saying that accounts for all of Katt's problems, but I'm sad for him nonetheless.

Not to mention this storyline is completely coloring her perception of the Hannah-Fran relationship. The call to stick with someone because no one better has come along yet and probably won't is so sad and reflective of the type of thinking that would lead Marnie to stick with Desi in the first place. Every time…

I was hoping the show would address it tonight, but the writers may be saving it for the inevitable breakup fight.

Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Bernie Mac all started with stand up and ended up doing shows or movies with kids at some point in their careers. It's a fairly common trajectory for stand up comedians who break out. None of them have been accused of being a serial rapist. I don't see Steve Harvey's career ending like…

I'm not proud to say I laughed hard at that line. Excellent delivery on the part of that actor, even though the wig on him was a big fat fail.

I read Bad Feminist. More memoir and commentary than criticism, the essays were less thought provoking than I had hoped. It used essays about feminism at the beginning and end of the book as a frame, but there was a lot in the middle that didn't mention feminism at all. Overall, I thought it was OK, but ultimately…

Bonnie is not the exception. The show doesn't really like her either. It needs her, though, because little else it is doing is working.

Have you read any of her tumblr posts? The essays in Bad Feminist are more polished, but some of those will give you a sense of what to expect from the book.

TV:
House of Cards: Season 4 is definitely stronger than Season 3 and ends on a note that makes me optimistic for Season 5.

Definitely. Season 5 is weaker than the others, but it's definitely not bad. And Season 6 provides a strong ending for the series as a whole. While Season 4 was my favorite, the final two seasons are not disappointing in the slightest.

Or Viola Davis.

I finished Fates and Furies. It definitely picked up in the back half, but it really shouldn't take 70 pages for a book to get even mildly interesting. I read Bloodchild and Other Stories after that, which was much more enjoyable. I particularly liked the brief afterwords Butler included at the end of each story.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Cochran didn't strike me as all that concerned about OJ's guilt or innocence. His motivation was being the lawyer to win a high-profile case that he initially saw as a losing one.

No Kardashian kids this episode certainly helps.

I recently finished My Life on the Road. There are some interesting stories in it, but on the whole it wasn't great. It wasn't bad. Just OK at best.

The refusal to give him a spoken line even in flashback killed me. While Beau's singing voice was lovely, I'm sure the actor would have loved to deliver a line.

Mind of a Chef is great. Changing to two chefs per season was a smart move on the show's part, since 16 episodes of David Chang was far too much.